Of The Nature of Things Author:Lucretius Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: TO THE MASTER If to have paced within thy House of Thought Among thy Mountains, from its windowed wings Surveying dominions of the Law-of-Things As into cloud... more », and star, and tempest wrought, And trees, and gods, and cities,—if to have caught Thy splendour, and thy pathos, and thy song (Thy hand upon my shoulder, Master, long From room to aery room) avail me aught, Then not without some scope of thy old truth, Then not without some ring of thy old worth, My sturdy voice of still unconquered youth Hath in an unknown tongue reported thee Unto a Continent of thy dear Earth . . . To thee unknown, beyond an unknown sea. Madison, Wisconsin, Summer of 1913. SUMMARY Proem (1-145). I. The nature of things in general (146-634). A. General principles concerning the existence of things (146-482). (a) Substance is eternal; that is, there exist primordial bodies of things (146-328); because nothing is born from nothing (164-214), nothing is dissolved into nothing (215-264), and the invisible character of these primordial bodies does not disprove their existence (265-328). (6) There exists also a void, that is, not only the space occupied by things, but also a space absolutely empty (329-417). (c) Nothing exists per se except body and void ; all else is but accident of that which exists per se (418-482). B. The primordial bodies are absolutely solid, indestructible, indivisible (483-634). II. Complementary to I. Confutation of Heraclitus (635-704), of Empedocles (705-829), of Anaxagoras (830-920). III. The infinity of the universe (921-1109). 1 The summaries are after the Italian of Guissani, with modifications, and the numbers refer to the Latin text. OF THE NATURE OF THINGS BOOK I Proem—1-145 Mother of Rome, delight of Gods and men...« less